We're grateful for the opportunity to share a behind-the-scenes look inside the Xero legal team and its global REAL function: Risk, Ethics, Advocacy and Legal. Geraldine Hamilton, GM – Legal, Global Customer Product and Partnerships, shares how the team has evolved, how it prioritises its work, and how AI and legal technology are changing the way it works, as Xero marks 20 years since it began in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington.
Can you tell us a bit about the Xero legal team and how you support the business?
The Xero legal team is part of a broader global function called REAL - Risk, Ethics, Advocacy and Legal. Our purpose is to help Xero go fast, safely; take smart risks with confidence; and unlock sustainable value. We work alongside a fast-moving, high-growth business to help shape decisions early, innovate and support confident execution.
One of the things that makes the team a bit unique is that while we support a genuinely global technology business, a good number of us are based in Aotearoa. That gives us a strong sense of connection and shared context, while still working across multiple markets and jurisdictions every day. We see ourselves as practical business partners: bringing judgment, clear options and a calm view of risk so teams can keep moving.
How has the team changed or grown over time, and what has that meant for how you work together?
It has changed a lot - and it’s a good time to ask because this year is 20 years since Xero began in Wellington! As Xero has grown, the legal function has evolved from a more traditional in-house legal team into a broader multidisciplinary group. The REAL team includes a diverse range of legal specialists as well as risk and compliance, government relations and public policy, data and AI governance folk and a small but mighty operations team!
That has changed how we work in a positive way and means we can look at issues more holistically. The current REAL team includes more than 60 of us based across six countries, so being intentional about connection matters. We invest heavily in shared language, practical tools and strong relationships so the team still feels cohesive even when the work is global and fast-moving. Last year we were fortunate to have an offsite in Melbourne with the whole team! [see image above].
How do you decide what to focus on day to day?
A lot of our prioritisation comes back to impact: where can we best help Xero move with clarity and confidence on its key initiatives? We spend time on the matters that are most important to our strategy and our customers. That can range from supporting new product development and partnerships, to navigating regulatory change, to helping teams think through AI, data and customer experience questions - and everything in between.
We also use the idea of “smart risk taking” deliberately and try to calibrate our response to the size and nature of the risk. That helps us avoid over-engineering low-risk decisions while making sure the high-stakes ones get the right attention.
Xero’s purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors and communities around the world - and the legal team helps support that by enabling the business to build great products for our customers.
"A lot of our prioritisation comes back to impact: where can we best help Xero move with clarity and confidence on its key initiatives?" | ||||
Where do you think the legal team makes the biggest difference for the business?
Probably in helping create the conditions for innovation and progress by finding workable paths forward. That is where I think our team adds the most value: translating complexity into practical options and helping to build confidence around difficult decisions.
That is especially true right now, when so much is changing at once. We are advising on Xero’s own AI products, while also using AI inside the team (and wider Xero) to improve how we work.
Is there any technology or tool that’s quietly made life easier for the legal team, or something on your wish list?
We recently launched Jira as our matter intake system which has made us much more deliberate about intake and prioritisation - and gives us helpful reporting on what we are working on. We also use Gemini, Glean and Claude for a wide variety of use cases including drafting, knowledge reuse, faster issue spotting and more consistent ways of working. We’re very fortunate to have some really clever technical folk in our team (and wider Xero) so we benefit from early access to great tools and as well as a variety of custom-built agents.
More broadly, we are interested in technology that helps us to free up time for the work where human judgment and intuition really matters and to make it easier for Xeros [Xero people] to get the right answer at the right time. If there is a wish list item, it is probably even better integration between knowledge, workflows and AI tools so support becomes even more seamless and proactive. Oh, and a magic wand to deal with global time zones for team meetings!
Ngā mihi nui to Geraldine Hamilton and the Xero REAL team for generously sharing a glimpse into how you work, and for sharing your thinking on smart risk-taking, technology and the role of human judgement with the in-house legal community.
Explore the Juno Counsel archive for more stories and perspectives from Aotearoa’s in-house legal community.